Digging holes for plants always seems to be a big opportunity to find things left by former owners or dropped by visitors to the house.

My most recent haul included this little yellow marble, nails, toys from the kids next door and money. Unfortunately the money almost always takes the form of pennies or nickels—The hundred dollar bills must degrade rapidly in the soil.

When we moved into the house twenty years ago the neighbor’s ivy had overrun the back two thousand square feet of the garden. We found all sorts of stuff lurking in it including an intact barbecue. And then there was this: 65 feet of a brick retaining wall. We had no idea it was there underneath all that ivy.

And here’s an artifact from my recent walk to my local canyon, the fossil remains of an extinct species of shopping cart, probably courtesy of the unseen homeless who must live nearby.

I’m sure backyard archaeology has turned up stranger things. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve dug up in the garden?